Glasgow's Shift from Inclusive City to Site of Rising Racist Hostility, Driven by Systemic Scapegoating
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sanghmitra-singh. "When I first moved to Glasgow from India, I felt welcomed and included. Now I just feel scrutinised | Sanghmitra Singh | The Guardian." August 23, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author, an Indian immigrant living in Glasgow since 2018, says the city has changed from being warm and welcoming to feeling hostile and dangerous, citing recent racist attacks and her own experiences of being stared at, questioned, and insulted. She argues this rise in racism comes from economic hard times, harmful media and political rhetoric, and social media algorithms, and calls for people to recognize they have more in common with each other than with the wealthy elites who benefit from division.
Conclusion
Glasgow (and Britain more broadly) has undergone a troubling shift from being a welcoming, inclusive place for immigrants and people of color to one marked by increasing racist hostility and violence; this shift is driven by systemic economic and social pressures being channeled into scapegoating of minorities by media and politicians, and society must resist this normalization by recognizing shared struggles against systemic injustice rather than turning against each other.
Premises
- The author personally experienced warm welcome and inclusion when she moved to Glasgow from India in 2018, but now experiences suspicion, scrutiny, and hostility instead.
- Multiple documented incidents of racist violence and disorder occurred in Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Falkirk in 2026, including assaults on Asian business owners, an attempted murder outside a mosque, mosque defacements, and explicit calls to 'keep Britain white.'
- The author has personally encountered increased hostility: strangers questioning her nationality and accent, comments blaming immigrants for job scarcity, prolonged staring, and being told to stop speaking a certain way in public.
- Long-term residents and colleagues confirm that while racism existed before in Scotland, the current climate feels distinctly more immediate and threatening.
- This rise in hostility correlates with the Covid-19 pandemic, a global recession, austerity, worsening cost-of-living crisis, extreme wealth inequality, rightwing media rhetoric, and social media algorithms that favor inflammatory content.
- Anti-racist rallies and public demonstrations of solidarity, while heartening, have not been sufficient to halt the growing tide of racist hatred and fear.
- The powerful and wealthy (e.g., billionaires) are the primary beneficiaries of social division and scapegoating, meaning ordinary people across racial lines actually share more common interests than they do with elites.
Assumptions
- The author's personal experiences and the specific incidents cited are representative of a genuine broader societal trend rather than isolated events or increased media coverage of pre-existing issues.
- There is a direct causal (not merely correlational) relationship between economic hardship/social stressors and the rise in racist sentiment and violence.
- Media rhetoric and political statements directly cause or legitimize real-world racist violence rather than merely reflecting pre-existing sentiment.
- Public demonstrations and rallies, by their nature, are inherently insufficient to create lasting social change without specifying what alternative interventions would work better.
- Economic and class-based solidarity is achievable and would meaningfully reduce racial division if people simply recognized their 'common interests.'
- The current rise in incidents represents a genuine escalation rather than the same underlying racism becoming more visible due to increased reporting or documentation (e.g., video, social media).